


You Need a Dictionary

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24036118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Blair is grading essays
Kudos: 11





	You Need a Dictionary

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Tursday prompt 'baffle'

You Need a Dictionary

by Bluewolf

Blair was steadily working his way through the essays he had set his 201 class. It was a simple enough exercise; he had simply asked them to rewrite, in their own words, the short introductory chapter to one of their text books. None of the 'essays' had been longer than a thousand words; some were even as short as five hundred. Short, succinct, saying everything necessary in as few words as possible.

The chapter in question was extremely pedantic. It said very little that was easy to understand. Just why its writer - and the publisher - felt it necessary to give an 'introduction' in language that most people would need a dictionary to interpret, Blair had never been able to understand; it would, he considered, baffle pretty well any reader.

Based on that chapter, it would have been easy for a lecturer to decide that the book wasn't worth the money, and choose a different one instead. But the actual content of the book was excellent - informative and easy to understand, and he sometimes wondered what the book's writer thought of that introductory chapter written at the behest of the publisher by an eminent anthropologist.

He had learned, in the past, that most students simply skipped past it - yet what it said, translated into simple language, gave excellent insight into the content of the book.

And so Blair had set this theme as the first piece of homework he gave the classes who used this book. Rewrite that chapter in their own words. It forced them to read and interpret it, and thereafter they would have this mini-essay to remind them of what it said. And one or two of the interpretations had been excellent.

He knew he would like to ask the man who wrote it why he had used the terminology he had. Did he dislike the author of the book, and hoped that a quick glance at the opening chapter would discourage people from buying it? It was possible. But it was something he would never know, never be able to ask, for the anthropologist who wrote it had died just before the book was actually published. He could of course ask the publisher why, but he suspected that he would simply be told, 'That was how it was worded, and we thought it would add academic credibility to the book'.

Yeah, right. The book didn't need ultra-pedantic wording anywhere in its content to make it excellent and informative and, above all, easily understood by the laziest student.

Blair shook his head as he considered that. Considered Brad Ventriss – possibly the laziest student it had ever been his misfortune to encounter. No; Ventriss would not have found it easy to understand; it was a book, and to understand the content of a book you had to have, at the very least, the willingness to read it.

And Ventriss had never had the willingness to do anything that could count as work. Even if all that meant was hitting the 'on' button on an audio book.


End file.
